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I was born on August 14th, in 1972 in Eliat, Israel. My mother, Linda, and my father, Jonathan, were both Americans, but they were resolved to have my birth in Israel. You see, in Eliat, Dr. Gowri Motha, a respected obstetrician with some interesting theories on birth had constructed the world's first and last, shark-proof, heated, sanitary water birthing chamber for dolphin-assisted water birth. Which was where I was born.
My mother and father were both hippies. I guess that's the best way to say it. They lived in San Francisco where he worked at a second hand album store and she was a secretary for a company that manufactured sewing machines. My grandparents on my mother's side, though, were very wealthy and they subsidized my parents income in the first years of their marriage.
My mother happened upon an article in Time Magazine about Dr. Motha and her theories on childbirth. Dr. Motha emphasized a lessening of sugar in the pregnant mother's diet along with a healthy exercise regiment. She has been quoted many times talking about the "smooth, gentle birth of a child exiting from a warm, strong, muscular uterine." She also had an exciting theory about dolphins acting as midwifes for human birth. Dolphins and Humans had a well-known natural affinity for one another. And dolphins naturally acted as midwifes for each other when they gave birth in the ocean and in captivity. (They still do.) Dr. Motha said that "dolphins sense a mother's contractions through sonar and assist her by sending back sonar waves that calm a mother as she gives birth." Her ambitious plan was to build the glass sea pool in Israel, if only funding could be found.
Which was where my grandparents came in. Urged on by my mother's insistence and eventually a threat that if they didn't fund Dr. Mothas project, my mother would raise their only grandchild to be a Republican. (Things were different back then.) My grandparents eventually crumbled and directed $50,000 to Dr. Motha's project. The Lawrence and Nora Sullivan Dolphin-Assisted Birthing Center still stands in Eliat, today.
My mother knew, as she helped fund the building of the birthing center in Eliat that she was with child and time was of the essence. She got very proactive about the center's construction, even moving to Israel, to supervise the project. She picked out the coral pink color that still covers the center's exterior walls and fencing. She also worked hard on the design and the construction of the glass-walled birthing tank. And indeed, once it was finished and assembled in the Red Sea, my mother was the first person to swim in it.
The dolphins arrived in June from the West German National Zoo. They were purchased outright using the centers funds. The three animals were actually airlifted in a long-distance flight from Bonn to Tel Aviv and then helicoptered to Eliat. My mother met them at the airport. Dr. Motha chose names for the dolphins from a book that she was reading at the time. They were named Kili, Fili and Bilbo Baggins. Since they all three looked alike, the researchers at Dr. Motha's center frequently interchanged the names.
The dolphins were installed in their new home and were given regular swimming and exercise time with my mother, while other clients for the center were located. Interested mothers, intrigued by the idea of mixing dolphins with child birth, slowly began appearing at the center in Eliat. All in all, 30 expectant couples arrived to take part in the experiment.
My father arrived in Eliat in July, ready for my arrival into the world.
Shortly thereafter, the Israeli Ministry of Health Resources got wind of the center's work and forbid the usage of the tank. They'd determined that the water was not sanitary enough for the emerging child and to curb lifelong afflictions, ordered Dr. Motha NOT to allow a single mother to birth in the tank. They tried to take the dolphins away too, but that proved to be too expensive and time consuming so Kili, Fili and Bilbo Baggins were left in their tank, with the strict instructions that they were not allowed to midwife any human children. Most of the other couples slowly returned to their previous homes, disappointed.
Not my mother, though. She stayed at the center, assuring the MOHR officials that she was going to give birth to me on dry land, per their request. When she went into labor on that warm, August night, the 13th, she calmly got out of bed in her room, woke my father and said, "Get Dr. Motha and her team. I am going to the tank." My father scrambled to assemble the birth team.
My mother walked slowly, but determinedly down to the beach of the center, climbed the stairs up to the side of the tank and sat down to greet the waiting dolphin midwives. They bobbed their heads playfully and nuzzled her bare feet. She slid into the warm waters and rolled onto her back, resting her head on the readied flotation device and placing her legs up into the birthing stirrups. In such a position, she was prepared to eject me into the world, comfortably floating in the warm, dolphin pool. Occasionally, one of the swimming dolphins would swim by, rubbing their sleek, soft bodies on my mothers hand. When Dr. Motha and her team arrived with my father, they found my mother quietly singing The Carpenters song, "Close to you" to herself.
The preparations were made. Lighting was turned on, even inside the tank. My mother was attached to monitoring devices using surgical tape. My father slid into the pool and walked over to my mother, his bare chest full of thick black hair. He stood behind my mother, holding her arms and whispering loving, careful words of support to her. The videographer began the recording equipment and the two team photographers hovered up on the tanks deck, capturing the event. Dr. Motha herself, slid into the tank, taking position to receive me into the world. My mother had dilated and her water had broken, releasing blood, amniotic fluid and other materials into the tank. The waters of the Red Sea had washed them all away, though. My father noted later, that once the amniotic fluids were released into the tank, he did notice the dolphins growing increasingly more playful and nudging him frequently, under the waters.
My birth, the actual incident of my birth, was otherwise uneventful. My body weight was low, because of my mother's low-sugar diet. Which made my actual entry smoother and easier for everyone. She drifted quietly in the tanks, grunting occasionally, but mostly humming quietly to herself, enjoying the sonar stimulants from the circling dolphins below. No, I quickly slid out into the world, caught by Dr. Motha who cleaned me off, snipped my umbilical cord and tied off both ends. She passed me to a waiting, human, midwife, who cleaned me further and checked my airtubes for blockage. My first sounds on the audio recording is a perturbed cough and then a loud, strong cry. On the same recording, you can hear Dr. Motha cooing at me, in Yiddish.
My mother was assisted exiting the tank. Her passage was made difficult by the slippery edge of the tank, her own weakness and the nearly whirlpool speed of the dolphins circling below. Aside from my father, nobody else noticed the change in the dolphins behavior. They seemed almost agitated about something. Even Dr. Motha made it out of the tank, with relative ease. She was anxious to see the newborn child and mother together.
On the audio tape, you can hear my father's growing concern. "Hey. What's going on with these dolphin's? They're gettin' sorta wound up, you know?!?" he says. "Ow! They headbutted my knee. Stupid animals! Knock it off, willya? I'm trying to get out of this - Dammit. Hey! HEY! HEY!" and the dolphins grabbed my fathers pajama bottoms in their mouths and took him under the water's surface. The video recording doesn't capture this as it's focused on me and my mother, but the audio does and you can hear the splash of the dolphins taking my father.
Panic happens next. People scramble to get into the pool or to figure out what's going on. There's a fear that a shark has somehow gotten into the tank. Someone even says, "Is it a shark?" out loud. When my father resurfaces in the middle of the tank, you can hear him yell, "These damn dolphins are goin' bonkers! They just took me under!" and then they take him under again.
"Get the mother and child off of the deck. Something is wrong with the dolphins," says Dr. Motha and my mother makes her way slowly down the stairs, a midwife carries me beside her.
"Ah Jesus! (cough) These dolphins! (sputter) Get em off of me." and then he is butted again, by a dolphin.
Under the water, the dolphins headbutt my father and rub their sleek bodies against his. One would drag him to the bottom of the pool and another one would grab him and pull him back to the top and slap him with their tails. They passed him around like dogs playing with a ragdoll. All the while, the dolphins seem to be dragging him to the far side of the tank.
Once they get him there, their plan finally becomes clear. My father was forcibly pressed against the tank, above the water line and the dolphins slid up to him and thrashed wildly, their bodies pressed against his. Water splashed all over the place in a wild froth. They dolphins were making love to my father and he realized it too.
"Ah! Get off! Get off! These dolphins are trying to hump me! Get off!" In the video he struggles against them, but with unsure footing and nothing to grab hold of, the dolphins completely dominate him. He is completely at the mercy of their crazed, sexual domination. "Help! Help me! I'm being raped by these dolphins! Agh! I can feel their dolphin schlongs! Help me!"
And Dr. Motha, helpless on the side of the tanks says very astutely, "I think that he's being molested by Bilbo Baggins, actually. Kili and Fili seem to have ejaculated already." The first time anyone identified the dolphins correctly.
The encounter ends in with a slap and a thrash. Bilbo Baggins the dolphin has his dolphiny orgasm and the drifts away into the tank. My father, tired, angry and humiliated uses the tank wall to clamber around to the deck and climb out, his pajama pants long gone. "They didn't get INSIDE me. They just dry-humped me for a while." he says, and then with finality, "Fucking dolphins!"
He's given a towel and taken back into the center to meet me and my mother for the first time. Nobody laughs about it, then. The mood is concerned and solemn. Later, when the pictures and videos are reviewed, I'm sure they laughed plenty.
The center eventually closed and was sold to the Isreali MOHR to be used as an instructional facility for new mothers. Kili, Fili and Bilbo Baggins were sold to a zoo in Berlin, in East Germany. Dr. Motha moved to London, where she still has a thriving practice today. I still get birthday cards from her, 30 years later. In the building that bears my grandparents name, you can see plenty of framed art of dolphins, but you can only receive instruction on normal, dry-land birthing techniques. The birthing tank was pulled from the Red Sea by a crane and parked behind the facility. In the ensuing years, teens have shot the glass with a variety of firearms and all that's left is the old, rusty frame. I was the first and last child born in the tank.
A few years later, when he got over the trauma of being molested by dolphins, my dad got a tattoo on his right bicep of a blue dolphin inside one of those red circles with a bar through it. It means, "No Dolphins Allowed". Not a whole lot of people know what it means. Those of us who do, appreciate his good sense of humor, though.
Kili, Fili and Bilbo Baggins in a picture taken at the East German Zoo, circa 1975.
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